


A Brush with Fame

by ChillyHollow



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChillyHollow/pseuds/ChillyHollow
Summary: Because love letters come in many forms….
Relationships: father/son - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Love Letters: A Cormoran Strike Valentine's Day Fest





	A Brush with Fame

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [StrikeLoveLetters](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/StrikeLoveLetters) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> A Brush with Fame

The fire in the fireplace was burning low when he poured a small whiskey for himself from the decanter left out on the low table. Everyone else was asleep, he presumed, since there wasn’t a sound in the large house. He listened for a while without hearing anything, then stood and opened one of the cabinet doors under the built-in bookshelves. There were photo albums here, lots of them, full of pictures from his busy life. He lifted quite a few of them out before he found the one he wanted, a battered navy blue one tucked in the back under many others. He hadn’t looked at this in years but tonight he wanted to.

He sat back in the comfortable leather chair and opened the album. It was dated 1973 inside the front cover although there were photos from later years inside. The first page held a blurry black and white photo of a young woman with very dark eyes, a heart-shaped face and a cloud of dark hair. She was sitting at a long bar with empty liquor glasses, cigarette butts filling the ashtrays, and scattered gin bottles around her, looking at something towards the left of the photo. He’d taken the photo himself with his small Instamatic. For a while he had documented the music world with it, taking photos of the roadies, the hangers-on, the crowds, the musicians and the groupies. He’d found this photo later on, and put it in his memory book. He turned the page. 

A second photo of the young woman was there, this time a full length color one. She was leaning back on a sofa, cigarette in hand, her head thrown back in a laugh, her long hair flowing. He’d talked her into the photo using his charm and celebrity to get her to pose a few weeks after he took the first one when he noticed her showing up at his concerts. He thought he’d given her backstage passes, as well, but he wasn’t sure. It was very long ago, after all.

He turned the page again. There was a third portrait of the dark-eyed lady, this time as a nude sitting on a straight backed chair. She was bare breasted, with a large shawl draped over her upper arm that tumbled across her stomach and hid her somewhat from the camera. He’d taken that one after he slept with her the first time. He remembered how she’d laughed when he grabbed the camera but she’d let him pose her. They’d spent the weekend together, rarely getting out of bed, and he’d taken her on tour. In those days he used speed to stay awake and functioning for long periods. Drugs were easily available to the rich and famous. He’d been surprised early in his career that drug dealers were eager to give him freebies as his fame grew. But he’d taken advantage of their willingness. As he had taken advantage of the beautiful women who’d thrown themselves in his path. She was different, though. This was Leda, the woman of his dreams.

The next page showed the dark-eyed lady in a crowd of people. It was taken at a concert. She was over at the side, looking at the camera, looking at him. Her head was up and she looked angry. He thought this was taken after they’d quarreled about his leaving her alone in the hotel to visit his family. He’d been married to Shirley then, his first real girlfriend, and their daughter Maimie had been about to have her 3rd birthday. He had gone home for the party. He wondered if she’d been pregnant by then. Perhaps. He was hazy about the dates they'd fucked, probably due to all the drugs they’d taken together. 

The next photo was similar to a very famous one that all the tabloids had. He’d tracked down the photographer and gotten this one after paying a huge sum. But he never regretted the money. He was sitting on one end of a banquette with two other men and his second wife-to-be Carla in the middle and the stylish and beautiful Leda on the other end. There were martini glasses and smoldering cigarettes on a low table in front of them. It was at a party a music producer had thrown. He and Leda were looking at each other, but the other people in the photo were oblivious to their attraction. He was certain she was pregnant with his child in this photo although she’d said nothing to him at the time. She’d simply gone off with one of the roadies and he’d found her fucking the guy in his hotel room bed. He’d been furious and called her a slut. She’d called him a tight ass and a wet blanket. He’d tossed them out and slammed the door, then gotten thoroughly drunk for days on end as he realized his Leda was collecting lovers like other people collect stamps.

He’d not seen Leda again until she showed up eight months pregnant at his house, demanding child support. He’d shown her the door. Given her wild partying, the baby could have been anyone’s. Of course later the DNA test she’d forced on him through the courts had shown the baby was actually his. His oldest son. It had been quite a scandal. Shirley had divorced him and taken three million pounds of his fortune. It had gotten him to cut back on the drugs, though, and get back to work. He’d created his best music after his first divorce.

He’d taken up with Carla on the rebound right after Leda dumped him but before the divorce with Shirley was final, and married her a year after Leda’s son was born. His son.The next page in the album showed Leda holding a baby, glaring at the camera. He remembered she’d sent this to him to pressure him to give her child support before the courts took over. The baby wasn’t really visible except for a bit of curly hair sticking up over the blanket. They didn’t look alike. His other sons resembled him but his oldest boy did not, except they were both tall. The boy looked like Leda’s older brother. He remembered meeting the brother when he’d gone to Cornwall to try to convince Leda to let him raise his son. He was settled down with Carla then and had two daughters with her, in a good imitation of happy families, and thought Leda was too much of a party girl to raise a child. Leda had been furious at his offer and thrown china at him. The brother had intervened, leading him outside and telling him in a firm voice that Leda would never allow him to take her boy, but that he, her brother, would keep an eye on the child. Rokeby wasn’t to worry. The boy would be ok. This was the first time he’d actually seen his son. The boy was four. He’d looked at him with those serious deep-set eyes and told him to go away, he was upsetting his mother. That was the first hint he had that this child had the same steel inside that had enabled Rokeby himself to play the music fame game with such success. 

The next photo was of the boy at the ocean, maybe six years old, playing in the sand at the water’s edge, then there were photos of him over the years, growing taller and taller. Leda’s brother had sent them, keeping him informed. Sometimes there had been report cards. His son was a good student even if he was a head taller than the other kids in the class, taller than the teachers sometimes. The last photo of him was taken after Leda’s death. He was in uniform, deployed by the Army to Afghanistan, but before he’d lost a leg serving his country. 

With the photo album open on his lap, Jonny Rokeby sipped at his whiskey. The boy had done very well without his help, without exposure to riches, fame and the tabloids. Well, the press’d hunted him up, those bloodsuckers, but he seemed to brush them off the way he brushed off offers of help from Rokeby himself. He was making a name for himself, too, something none of Rokeby’s other kids had done or were likely to do. They’d had it too easy, cushioned by fame and riches. It didn’t build character, that sort of life. He was glad they’d not have to struggle the way he had, but there was a price to be paid. 

He wondered what price Leda had paid for her brush with fame. She’d had a few other affairs with rock musicians, although none as rich and famous as he, but as she grew older, she descended into drugs and partying with ever seedier men. He had sent her money but kept her on a tight leash, well aware of how cash slipped through her fingers. He’d made sure that Oxford knew he’d cover his son’s fees. books and tuition but it hadn’t been necessary. He’d been on scholarship and then after Leda died, he’d dropped out of school and entered the Army. He’d seen mentions of his son in the tabloids when he started hanging out with the social beauty Charlotte Campbell. She was absolutely gorgeous but crazy, crazier even than Leda by all accounts. He wondered if that was what had attracted his son to Campbell--a resemblance to his mother. At least that was long over now. He slipped a photo that had arrived from his lawyer’s office this morning out of an envelope and put it in the old blue album--a photo taken covertly at his son’s wedding. He wished him well. Tomorrow this album would be deposited at his lawyer’s office, along with the new will he was going to sign, with instructions that it go to his son. He wondered what Cormoran would think when he was given the album. He hoped he would be forgiven. 

He pulled a sheet of paper out of the desk drawer and sat down there to write. When he was finished, the letter was inserted in the last page of the album, then it went in a pre-addressed box that he sealed, ready to take to the lawyer’s office tomorrow. He drank off the last of the whiskey and headed to bed.

_Son,_

_Since we are not likely to meet before I am too ill to tell you these things (I have liver cancer and the outlook is grim), I wanted to say I loved your mother deeply. I would have married her but she made clear I was just another notch on her bedpost, just another famous guy she’d seduced. I said some things and she did some things we couldn’t forgive. I cleaned up my act, moved on, and made music based on the experience. When Leda broke up my first marriage with news of her pregnancy, I wanted you to come live with me. She fought it, and with my own bitter memories of what it’s like to live as a pawn between two angry parents, I let you go. I’ve always regretted it but it was best for you, now that I look back. Reflected fame and riches made my other kids dependent and weak. You are your own man. I wish I knew what you are like, that we had a relationship, but that’s not going to happen now. I love you because you are my blood and I am very proud of you because you have the steel that marks you as my child. All these years I’ve held back songs I’ve recorded, picking the best for a posthumous album. It’s dedicated to your mother but you own the copyrights, Royalties will go into a trust I created for you to use—or not—as you see fit._

_I’ve never stopped wishing things were different, although now that I’m dying, I see they were for the best. I wish you a happy marriage, a long life and many children that I hope you will love and cherish the way I should have done you._

_Your father,_

_Jonny Rokeby_

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wondered why Rokeby was such a good father to all of his kids except one.
> 
> This isn't a typical Valentine's Day love story. It's more about lost loves and the debris they have left behind.


End file.
